I’m sorry.

I’m starting to forget what it sounds like when you breathe, the way your scent would tip toe up my nose when I laid beside you that fateful day in June, when you held me close, that day before it all began to fade away. That day feels so far now, five hundred and thirty four days before this moment, (I know, I counted). I remember snuggling up to you underneath the blankets, the air beneath them radiating with your warmth. I was sweltering but I let you keep us covered because you loved the heat, your fragile frame not able to keep in much warmth. In turn you humored me allowing my musical choices to purr through your speakers. You let me play what I liked, putting up with the gushy soundtrack to the fairytale romance we would never have. You pretended to hate it, but I knew your scrunched up faces of disgust were only teasing. But the way you struck through our loving carelessness with a need for passwords, the need hiding tucked away computer files from me left me feeling like there were things I’d never know about you. Thinks you didn’t want me to know. That space between us only got wider with time. But that hot day the space seemed almost invisible, like there were hardly any molecules separating us from one another. I can’t remember if it was that day or another when you encouraged me to open up to you, to share the little tales that make me who I am, that make me feel broken and torn. All our days melt together, our relationship one giant conversation beneath the sheets of your bed. And I told that little story to you, I avoided your glances and stared at my hands, wringing them upon your pillow. You listened intently and made a snide comment when I’d finished, I remember the hurt in my heart. I turned away from you, my eyes tearing. You put your arm around my waist then, made me turn to you, look in your eyes, told me you didn’t care, that it didn’t mean anything. Hearing those words flow from your mouth made that hole in my heart a little smaller. And those uncountable hours that day that we spent together, watching one another, holding one another were some of the best of my life. The knowledge that we would be apart for 22 days made that day not a sad one, but a happy one of heartfelt goodbyes and hugs. As my foot dropped to the pavement outside your house so did a tear from my eye. If only I’d known at that moment that that was the last time I’d ever really hold you the same way, maybe I would have hugged you a little harder, kissed you a little longer, and fought a little harder to keep that love from dissolving away.